Peter Rhodes: The house where Islamic State lives

THE solution to Greece's financial crisis will be officially celebrated at the weekend with a flypast over Athens. A flypast of pigs, naturally. See you all again in six months, lads?

A READER living on a pension and counting the pennies says he has saved money by disconnecting his burglar-alarm system, turning off all external lights and resigning from Neighbourhood Watch. Instead, he has raised the black flag of Islamic State on his front lawn. As a result, he says: "the police, MI5, MI6 and the army are watching my house 24/7 and I'm saving fifty quid a month."

SOME of France's brightest students were stumped by an exam question in their English paper, asking how a character "coped" with a situation. Their argument, backed up by some academics, is that "coping" is a term understood only by fluent English speakers who have spent time in Britain. How true. Indeed, the very concept of coping, the Anglo-Saxon virtue of quietly putting up with a difficulty, is alien to most other nations. Even the Yanks have problems with it. There is a tale of an English doctor who wrote a medical paper entitled "Coping with Back Pain." The American edition was renamed "Conquering Back Pain."

FOR example, if you are on a motorway approaching a slip road with vehicles arriving from your left, isn't it better to stay in the centre lane until they have joined the motorway? One man's lane hogging can be another man's courtesy.

FARAF Ann Abdul Hadi, 21, represented Malaysia at the SouthEast Asia Games. She won six medals, including two golds. You might imagine she would be roundly congratulated. Not exactly. A bunch of religious leaders and internet trolls have condemned her for wearing a leotard which revealed her "aurat," an Islamic word describing the thigh and genital area. I wonder how many times these men of God had to scrutinise the footage before deciding a sin had been committed. If a few sex-starved clerics spent less time slavering over Faraf's aurat and a little more time admiring her God-given skills, this world would probably be a happier place.

VERILY, the costumes are magnificent, the sets are superb, the lighting a treat and the acting, eagerly executed by Messrs Carvel and Marsen, is as sharp as a biddy's bodkin. Yet forsooth, am I the only viewer in Christendom who harbours a pecksniff of suspicion that, behind the wonderful production values and the gloriously overblown language of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (BBC1) is a plot which, to be frank, is a steaming pile of piffle?